What Were They Thinking?
5 Meeting the Love of Our Lives
BETTS BECAME MORE ALOOF as she moved out of junior high and started high school. In some ways, it was a relief. I’m sure Brian still suffered from her tantrums, but they both kept it out of my sight. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Brian wasn’t growing much, but he was maturing. And it seemed that he had friends. The party invitation he’d had at the end of fifth grade seemed to be more than a passing thing. I didn’t hesitate to give him permission to go to the sixth grade year-end party. Nor did I think twice about it when he asked if we could pick up Cassie Clinton.
We knew the Clintons, though not well. He’d moved into the old Eberhardt place about six years before and built a small grass airstrip. He was an avid small aircraft pilot. The airstrip wasn’t really open to the public, though occasionally other planes landed there. All the neighbors had been invited to tour the little airstrip one Sunday afternoon and I found John and Bea to be gracious people. I wasn’t as enthused about his minister and John seemed to think that everyone should abide by his particular set of religious dogma. As long as you ignored that aspect, they were fine people but we never really became closer.
“Young man, you don’t wait in the car for a girl, even if you are just giving her a ride. You always pick up a girl at the door and walk her back to her door. No matter what. Get out and go to the door. Cassie’s parents are conservative and will want to know you are a gentleman.” Perhaps I was a little harsh with my son, but I’d seen some of the boys that Betts liked to hang out with and my son was not, by God, going to be like them. If that was who Betts wanted to date, she’d be gone to college before she ever went out. I scowled again at Brian when he reached for the front door and he jerked back to open the back door for Cassie then slide in beside her.
Everyone knew we were just offering a ride and this wasn’t a date between two twelve-year-olds but I noticed Cassie didn’t slide all the way over. Kids seemed to grow up so much faster these days. But when did I first know I was in love with Hayden? First grade? We’d had our ups and downs, but there was never a doubt in my mind that Hayden would be my forever man.
I stopped to visit a few minutes with Amanda Lenox and just check to see if she needed any help. I wasn’t very experienced with giving parties and assumed parents were all as frazzled as I would be. Amanda smiled and said she made her daughter organize everything and aside from making food, she and Paul had little to do. She led me to the back door and I saw about twenty kids—a little overbalanced on the girl side, but several boys as well. Paul was at the grill and the kids were wolfing down food as only newly-minted seventh-graders could. That was when I saw something that made my heart jump to my throat.
My little boy. Brian and Cassie were holding hands as they ate chips and drank their soft drinks. My mouth went dry and my first instinct was to rush out and break them apart immediately.
Like any mother who does her children’s laundry, I knew Brian had discovered the pleasure of self-pleasure. Just this week, after finding a crusty sock stuck to a pair of his underwear, I’d rummaged around in Betts’ room until I found the old book I’d given her at puberty. I’d left it on his bed with a box of tissues, never thinking that Betts might have been reading it one-handed.
But seeing the reality of my son holding a girl’s hand and being so completely relaxed with her, laughing and even joking with their friends, threw me for a loop. I excused myself from Amanda and hurried home.
“Was he being impolite or pushy?” Hayden asked as we cuddled in bed that night and I told him what I’d observed.
“No. He looked like a perfect gentleman and attentive boyfriend. But Hayden, he’s too young!”
“Did he look guilty after the party? Like he was trying to hide something?”
“No,” I moaned. “They got in the back seat and didn’t even try to hide the fact they were still holding hands. And the Clintons are picking him up for church tomorrow morning. But Hayden, he’s too young!” I repeated.
“Now that worries me more than his holding hands,” Hayden laughed. “I don’t suppose they teach anything immoral over there, but I hope he doesn’t become a Bible-thumping evangelical. That could make the next few years miserable.”
“Hayden…”
“When did I first tell you I was going to marry you?”
“What? Uh… No. You didn’t tell me first. I told you.”
“And?”
“Seventh grade.”
“Just because Brian is little, we think of him being much younger than he is. Twelve? Thirteen? Boys start noticing girls and as long as they aren’t behaving inappropriately, I don’t think we should interfere. I’ll just make sure that occasionally we have a conversation about proper behavior.”
I just sighed. He’s just too old for his age.
Getting Brian through seventh grade and Betts through her junior year in high school wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Betts seemed to have tamed her wild side a bit and I overheard her telling Doreen in no uncertain terms that she planned to be a virgin on her wedding night. As long as that wasn’t tomorrow, I was fine with it.
We were playing cards with Dennis and Abby Hopkins one night when they mentioned the expanded circle of friends the boys had in junior high. I’d just assumed that things were about the same in junior high as they’d been in elementary school but failed to take into account kids from three different elementary schools fed into the junior-senior high.
“Well, we’ve always tried to teach the boys not to be prejudiced but they’d really never had a chance to interact with anyone of another race. We live in such a white bread neighborhood!” Dennis said. “Farmers.”
“I volunteered at the school when one of the cooks got that awful flu. What I saw in the cafeteria told me they’d taken the lessons to heart. The boys were with a group of about twenty or twenty-five in the middle of the cafeteria. It was a fully mixed crew of boys and girls and of black and white. Some of those boys have gotten really big. They are much taller than Geoff and tower over Brian,” Abby said.
“And they all get along together? You know I always worry about Brian being forced into things because he’s so much smaller than the others. He’s barely five feet tall.”
“From what Geoff told us, Brian organized it all. He invited the black kids to their table and several of them work together in study hall. Geoff says it’s mostly so they can borrow Brian’s notes from class,” Dennis laughed. “Brains wins over brawn.”
If only that were always the case. It had been a year since the bigger boys pushed Brian off his bike and stole his collection money. Hayden and I debated the issue all that night. I was ready to have him quit the paper route. And all through the incident, Brian refused to accuse the boys, holding that it was a dog that ran him off the road.
Some of the neighborhood women occasionally bake an extra casserole or batch of cookies to share with our neighbor, Mr. Henderson. That poor old man is a hundred years old and almost completely deaf. It’s nothing official or organized, but I saw my mother take him a casserole a few times and I just started doing it as well. I stopped by with a casserole not long after Brian’s incident with the dogs and he told me all about chasing away the boys who had pushed Brian in the ditch and robbed him.
We gave Brian a defense. It was an old remedy that we never considered was cruel or inhumane. Back in the day, there were always dogs getting hit because they were chasing cars. The accepted method of training them was to drive by and when they gave chase, spray them with ammonia. The dogs found the mist from a squirt gun to be unpleasant and soon stopped chasing cars. We figured it would work the same way on people and gave Brian a squirt gun filled with ammonia. We never heard another word about it.
Until two large boys attacked Jessica at school. Brian heard the ruckus and moved into action. He squirted both boys in the eyes with ammonia.
I didn’t even know he was still carrying it! It had been over a year since the bicycle incident and there was certainly no reason for him to carry the squirt gun in the winter. I’d seen it lying on a shelf in his room when I gathered his laundry. Because the school had a no-weapons rule in effect with severe penalties, Brian had switched to a small plastic bottle for his ammonia. We discovered that he never went anywhere without it.
He saved Jessica. The boys were both partially blind. If only Brian’s big friends had been with him in that hallway. We had a long talk with Brian, encouraging him to find ways other than violence to solve conflicts, but my son was still small and bullies were bullies.
Things seemed to change between Brian and Betts after that. We never talked about his role in saving Jessica, but Betts treated Brian more respectfully. I think it had more to do with Betts truly discovering her sexuality and being scared out of her wits by it. Or perhaps it was Brian discovering her sexuality that scared her. I was never quite sure what had passed between those two, but despite still being a bitch at times, there was almost a truce between the two. I’d have to pay attention to that.
I wasn’t aware of any problems in school in eighth grade but there were interesting developments.
There was no longer any denying that Brian had a girlfriend. The fall when he entered eighth grade, Hannah Gordon had claimed him. Betts was a senior and appalled that I’d let Brian date, but after that first surprise and Hannah showing up to ride bikes with him, I had a long chat with Rev. and Mrs. Saul Gordon. I hadn’t really been back to the Methodist Church since I quit my job as secretary to go to work at the News. What I found in my chat were two delightful people who were only too happy that their daughter had finally come out of her shell and made friends. Even if one of them had been declared her boyfriend (by unanimous vote of two to zero).
We agreed to observe and not attempt to step in or interfere unless we saw questionable behavior. What we saw were two kids who had fun playing together and became best friends. It was apparent that Hannah had no concept of a boyfriend being more than a friend who happened to be male. And as smitten as Brian was, he wasn’t going to let anything endanger their friendship. He was as happy as I’d ever seen him. We also discovered the Gordons enjoyed playing cards and often had six-handed games with the Hopkinses and Gordons together.
And Betts, though still trying to get him in trouble occasionally, had seemed to calm down and was no longer dating boys we considered risky.
There was a new confidence about Brian that I’d seen only in his brief relationship with Cassie and his ongoing friendship with his guardian angel, Jessica. I became aware of it most when I picked him up at the dude ranch after a weekend spent celebrating his fourteenth birthday. I discovered he was the only boy with an entire Girl Scout troop that weekend. What a recipe for disaster!
Instead, the troop leaders regaled me with what a gentleman Brian was, how helpful he’d been with the girls in their riding lessons, and how he’d even saved one from serious injury when she fell from her horse. I watched with my mouth hanging open as the leaders and every girl in the troop gave him a big hug before they got on their bus to depart. The last two—I have to say the most beautiful of the troop—seemed to linger in their hugs longer than I thought was really merited. Thank God these girls all lived a hundred miles away from us.
Brian and Hannah often rode the paper route together and she’d even delivered his papers the morning he was at the dude ranch. Everything seemed fine, so it came as a shock when he was knocked off his bike and brutally beaten while delivering papers just after Easter. When I discovered that it was part of an ongoing bullying campaign that was well-known around the school, I flew into a rage.
“I want them arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder!” I screamed at the sheriff’s deputy who handled the case. “This is unacceptable.”
“Mrs. Frost, believe me, I want to put them in jail and throw away the key. Unless Brian can positively identify them, there is nothing we can do. Brian identified the car, but it had been reported as stolen only a few minutes before the incident occurred. It was recovered in a ditch down near the river. The gang professed to have all been late for school because Moore’s car had been stolen. We are all positive that they are the perpetrators, but we have no proof.”
That wasn’t good enough. I went straight to the leader’s house and pounded on the door.
I backed off the porch as soon as I saw the leer on the face of the man who opened the door. And smelled his breath. There was no sense talking to this brute.
I was almost as angry that Brian’s friends didn’t take things into their own hands to get revenge on the boys. Does that make me a bad person? They beat my son! And his friends did nothing! Except Hannah, the dear sweet girl delivered his papers. We kept an eye out. Both our families spot-checked her route to make sure there was no sign of anyone watching her. We didn’t see anything that would make us believe she was in danger but we saw the sheer joy she had in riding her bike and delivering the papers. The child glowed.
The sheriff’s office called one day near the end of the school-year and told us the gang had been arrested. It looked at first like they would be released again despite the number of students who heard them confess and their second attempt on Brian in the school parking lot. The saving factor was that one of the original members of the gang, the leader’s girlfriend, had become frightened and transferred to a different school after the incident. Hearing that her boyfriend’s gang was arrested and afraid that they would point her out, she went to the sheriff, confessed and witnessed against the other five.
It took much longer to find out that my son had orchestrated the whole affair. “You should have seen him, Mom. He was awesome. He scared me so badly I almost killed him. Can I have another waffle, please?” Betts was so focused on her graduation that it took me a threat to not let her attend before I finally wheedled the whole story out—at least as much as my sometimes air-headed daughter knew.
That was all overshadowed, though by Brian’s breakup with Hannah, giving her his paper route, and deciding that he’d cook for us.
It was no surprise that Brian wanted to go to the dude ranch again. I figured it was probably about the last time he’d make the trip. He’d be going into high school in the fall and was no longer delivering newspapers, so not earning free trips. He had one more trip earned. We agreed. Maybe too enthusiastically.
It had been a difficult summer. Not that we were in conflict with each other, but it was difficult to get together for any intimate time. Betts was on the road doing horse shows, so Hayden and I carpooled to work. That gave us slightly longer work days as he reported earlier than me and I stayed a little later than him, but when we got home, our son was there. We tried to be circumspect with our son in the house, but both of us were about to burst. Hayden took Brian to the ranch much earlier in the morning than we’d normally go. When he got back, I was naked and waiting for him in bed. We pretty much stayed there the rest of the weekend.
Perhaps that was why picking Brian up on Sunday afternoon was such a shock.
He was putting luggage in a car for two beautiful teens under the watchful eye of their mother. Their heart-stoppingly beautiful mother. Oh, my God! I looked up at Hayden and he tore his eyes away from the vision to look at me.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just took me by surprise.”
“Hayden,” I whispered. “I’m wet.” His eyes opened farther than I thought possible and we didn’t wait for our son to introduce us. We marched up to Anna Pratt and said hello.
Anna’s smile left us both breathless.
“We should talk,” she whispered. We stepped away from the car. The three teens were still so caught up in each other that I’m not sure Brian realized we had arrived.
“I don’t know about you, but my girls put one over on me,” she said. “I had no idea they were meeting a boy here this weekend. I apologize.”
“No need. Our son has been here several times and it never occurred to us to ask him if he was meeting someone. Were your daughters here at the Girl Scout weekend?”
“Yes. Only the taller one is actually my daughter, Jennifer. Courtney might as well be, though. The two are joined at the hip. I thought they might be joined other places, too, but it seems they are interested in boys after all.”
“Brian was rather circumspect about the weekend with the Girl Scouts, but their leaders couldn’t stop singing his praises and Jennifer seemed to be quite interested. I hadn’t really heard much about her since other than a letter at Christmas and I’ve spotted a couple since,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about our children. I wanted to talk to Anna. Well, this was a start.
“Oh, I got an earful after that weekend. ‘Brian was so nice.’ ‘Brian is a hero.’ ‘He was so loyal to his girlfriend.’ I thought at that point the subject was over, but since the Christmas card he sent, there has been a near weekly correspondence among them. What changed this summer that brought them here together?”
“That I can answer,” Hayden said. “He broke up with his girlfriend. You wouldn’t notice it since they’ve continued all summer to play and ride their bikes together, but I’ve noticed he’s talked to other girls and met them as well. Still, if it was loyalty to his girlfriend that kept them apart, that is past.”
We continued to talk and get to know each other better. I didn’t want to stop, but we noticed our three children were watching us. We exchanged phone numbers and hugs, much to the surprise of the teens. But having broken the ice, there was no hesitance on their part to have a final hug and little kiss.
Hmm. We didn’t get the kiss. But I thought about it.
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